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Tail Docking

Some boxers with tails and docked

Essentially, docking is the surgical removal of a dog’s tail. Tail docking occurs in one of two ways. The first involves constricting the blood supply to the tail with a rubber ligature for a few days until the tail falls off. The second involves the severance of the tail with surgical scissors or a scalpel. The tail is amputated at the dock.

Typically docking to puppies up to 14 days old is routinely carried out by both breeders and veterinarians without anaesthesia. Opponents of these procedures state that most tail dockings are done for aesthetic reasons rather than health concerns and are unnecessarily painful for the dog. There is also evidence that the tail remains more sensitive to pain for life in some dogs.

Robert Wansborough argued in a 1996 paper [4] that docking tails puts dogs at a disadvantage in several ways. First, dogs use their tails to communicate with other dogs (and with people); a dog without a tail might be significantly handicapped in conveying fear, caution, aggression, playfulness, and so on. Certain breeds use their tails as rudders when swimming, and possibly for balance when running, so active dogs with docked tails might be at a disadvantage compared to their tailed peers. In 2007, Stephen Leaver, a graduate student at the University of Victoria, published a paper on tail docking which found that tail length was important in the transmission of social cues. The study found that dogs with shorter tails (docked tails) would be approached with caution, as if the approaching dog was unsure of the emotional state of the docked dog. The study goes on to suggest that dogs with docked tails may grow up to be more aggressive. The reasoning postulated by Tom Reimchen, UVic Biologist and supervisor of the study, was that dogs who grew up without being able to efficiently transmit social cues would grow up to be more anti-social and thus more aggressive.

Legally, tails docking varies throughout the UK. In Scotland under The Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006, docking is completely banned except when deemed necessary through injury or disease. A vet must carry out the docking procedure in Northern Ireland.

In England and Wales under the Animal Welfare Bill docking is banned except for certified ‘working dogs’ and because of disease or injury.

Rest assure that owning a dog that has been docked is not, in itself, an offence providing that the person did not ask for the dog to be docked.

Docked dogs from Ireland

We are seeing an ever growing trend in people going to Ireland for pups with docked tails.  We would urge anyone to a very hard think about this before going ahead with it.  Unfortunately in Ireland there is an ever growing problem with puppy farms.  These places with often keep bitches locked in small filthy cages and use them to churn out puppies.  These poor dogs are seen purely as money making machines; they have miserable lives and are often just discarded when they can’t produce pups any more.  The pups produced will more than likely have health problems throughout their lives and may develop behavioural issues from the conditions in which they were raised for the first 8 weeks of their lives.  Please have a look at our Sad Side of Rescue to see some of the horror stories we have had to deal with from puppy farms in Ireland.

So please don’t help these evil puppy farmers continue to ruin the lives of countless more generations of boxers all for the sake of a docked tail.

Like everywhere there are genuine breeders in Ireland with the breeds’ best interest at heart.

Damaged Tails

The main argument for the docking of tails is that a boxer with a tail is more likely to damage it than other breeds.  Why a boxer is more likely to damage their tail than say a staffie (who have very similar tails and who can wag them every bit as much as a boxer) is beyond us.  So far since the ban we have come across very few stories of boxers damaging their tails.  It does happen but it also happens in every other breed even those that were not traditionally docked.  The number of dogs damaging their tails is very very small and really is nothing to worry about.

It seems to be people have got an image of what a boxer should look like and unfortunately for many they can’t see past a docked tail, they may argue it’s purely because they don’t want the boxer to damage its tail but they will never have owned a boxer and will never have experienced this.  Too many people focus on breed “standards” and go on about “ruining the clean lines”.

It’s all nonsense and a boxer is a boxer with or without a tail.  What matters most is the personality.  That doesn’t change with a tail and at the heart of it is what we love most about boxers!